Short stories not in continuity, but roughly following the shape of Merlin's lives, from birth to the present day, from a dozen points of view, to varying degrees of magic actually being a thing. There's also two poems, which I didn't really get. I liked how each section started off with quote from either Thomas Malory of Geoffrey of Monmouth, as a kind of cheat code to what she was playing off. I think all or most of these were written in the early to mid 1980s.

Yolen's such a master of the form that it's hard to do anything but stand back and admire her skill. Each one of these fell perfectly into place, with its twist on the mythology existing side by side with characters who made sense in and of themselves, and had their own lives and compelling storylines. I genuinely liked all of these, and loved several, and this is from someone who doesn't usually especially care about Merlin or short stories. It probably helped that he's not always the centre of the stories.